Doug Polk is stepping away from The Lodge Card Club. About six weeks after the Round Rock poker room reopened following a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) raid and a grand jury that cleared all charges, Polk announced on July 3 that he is ending his active involvement with the business he helped build into one of the largest poker rooms in the world. He is keeping his ownership stake. He is just done running the place.
“With several other projects demanding more of my time, and my family continuing to grow, I’ve decided this is the right time to step back from my involvement with The Lodge so I can focus more fully on those priorities,” Polk wrote in a post on X. “While I’ll remain a shareholder, I will no longer have any active role or involvement with The Lodge. The company will move forward under its current leadership.”
The announcement closes a chapter that began in January 2022 and became the headline story behind the growth of poker in Texas and the rollercoaster ride The Lodge experienced.
How It Started
Polk, along with fellow poker vloggers Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme, purchased a majority stake in The Lodge Card Club in early 2022. The club was already the largest poker room in Austin, operating out of Round Rock, a suburb just north of the city. Joining existing majority partners Jake Abdalla and Jason Levin, the three brought a media footprint and a stated philosophy: no hidden fees, no sketchy practices, and a genuine commitment to running things the right way.
Polk was not a passive investor. He played at the club regularly, promoted it on his YouTube channel, wore Lodge gear on televised poker shows, and showed up in low-stakes cash games to play alongside members. The Lodge grew aggressively under the group’s ownership, eventually reaching 82 tables and becoming not just the largest room in Texas but one of the biggest in the country. In July 2024, the ownership group expanded further, purchasing Rounders Card Club in San Antonio and rebranding it as The Lodge Card Club San Antonio.
The Raid
On March 10, 2026, roughly 20 agents from the TABCs Financial Crimes Unit, along with officers from the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office and an IRS agent, executed a search-and-seizure warrant at The Lodge in Round Rock. No one was arrested. But the club was shut down immediately, and approximately $2 million in total assets were seized, including about $1.35 million in cash flagged in the warrant as suspicious deposits, along with roughly $721,000 frozen from a connected business account and various equipment.
The warrant alleged five violations of the Texas Penal Code, including money laundering, engaging in organized criminal activity, and promoting or keeping a gambling place. The investigation had started with a public complaint filed with the TABC in April 2024. Agent Douglas Bell began exterior surveillance of the club in June 2024 and obtained bank records by August of that year. Then, starting April 17, 2025, undercover agents made at least six visits to play $1/$2 no-limit hold’em and document operations firsthand. The last undercover visit was January 30, 2026, just six weeks before the raid.
The TABC’s core argument was that The Lodge takes no rake, as Texas law requires, but charging membership fees and seat fees still constitutes an illegal economic benefit from gambling. That is a legal theory that, if accepted, would threaten roughly 80 poker clubs operating under the same model across Texas.
The timing of the raid was brutal. Just 16 hours before agents arrived, Wayne Harmon had taken down the Lodge Championship Series Main Event for $203,990. A scheduled World Poker Tour event was canceled. More than 200 employees were laid off. Players were told to take their chips home and wait.
Polk’s Response
Polk broke his public silence in a written statement on March 16, calling the investigation a “witch hunt.” He denied any personal knowledge of or involvement in money laundering and pledged that players with chip balances and outstanding tournament payouts would be made whole, out of his own pocket if necessary.
On March 31, after consulting with his legal team, Polk released a 30-minute video detailing his position. His core argument was that, because The Lodge takes zero rake, any money-laundering classification is downstream of the state’s theory that the underlying gambling was illegal. “When you hear money laundering and organized crime, you think of a very different thing than what is really going on here,” he said. He also pledged to personally cover what co-owner Brad Owen estimated as “somewhere in the seven-figure range” in outstanding player liabilities.
The three primary targets of the investigation were Polk, Abdalla, and Levin, the three majority shareholders. Owen, Neeme, and other minority investors, including Ryan Fee, Nick Petrangelo, Jamie Kerstetter, and Thomas Keeling, largely stayed silent, likely on legal advice.
The Grand Jury and Reopening
By mid-April, it had emerged that the state had dropped the money laundering angle and was focused solely on whether the club’s poker operation constituted illegal gambling under Texas law. The state filed a civil asset forfeiture petition on April 8, one day before the 30-day statutory deadline, to preserve its hold on the seized money without filing criminal charges.
Then on April 28, the Williamson County Grand Jury returned a “no true bill”, declining to indict Polk, his partners, or The Lodge on any charge. The seized assets were ordered returned. Polk announced the ruling on X: “BREAKING: All charges against myself, my partners, and the Lodge have been officially rejected. The seized money and equipment will be returned, and we will reopen as quickly as possible.”
The Lodge Card Club in Round Rock reopened on May 26, roughly two and a half months after the raid.
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Why Polk Is Leaving
Polk did not cite the raid directly as his reason for stepping back. His stated reasons are a growing family and other business commitments. He and his wife Kaitlin welcomed a daughter in March 2026, just days before the raid, and have a young son as well. He also has ongoing obligations tied to his poker solver Lucid Poker and his work with ClubWPT Gold.
But the context is hard to ignore. Polk had already begun pulling back before the raid even happened. In late 2024, after an online poll showed some players were uncomfortable with his presence in Lodge tournaments, he announced he would stop playing in tournaments at the club. He kept playing cash games, but the relationship between Polk as owner and Polk as player had become complicated.
The raid made everything harder. He personally guaranteed seven figures in player exposure. He spent months managing a very public legal fight while a daughter was born and other projects piled up. When the club reopened and the dust settled, stepping away probably felt less like a difficult decision and more like the obvious one.
“This feels like the right time for me to close this chapter,” he wrote. “I wish everyone at The Lodge nothing but success in the years ahead.”
What This Means for Texas Poker
The Lodge remains open and operational in both Round Rock and San Antonio. Polk’s departure does not change that. But it does remove the most recognizable face from the building, the person who more than anyone else put The Lodge on the national poker map through content, personality, and a willingness to be publicly accountable for how the place was run.
The raid also left some unresolved tension in the broader Texas poker landscape. The grand jury’s “no true bill” resolved Polk’s immediate legal situation but did not settle the underlying question of whether the membership-fee model is legal under Texas law. The Legislature meets only in odd-numbered years, meaning the next opportunity to clarify anything will be in January 2027. In the meantime, roughly 80 clubs across the state are operating under the same legal framework that nearly took The Lodge down.
Polk built something real in Round Rock. The Lodge grew from a 60-table room to one of the premier poker destinations in the country on his watch, and he leaves it in stable hands with his ownership stake intact. That is probably the cleanest possible exit from a situation that could have ended much worse. But his absence from the day-to-day will be felt, and the question that triggered all of this, whether Texas poker is actually legal, is still sitting there unanswered.
